cash bail fine fee
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bit belated, this has to do with extraction of $ from poor ppl of color
see general cat criminalization
see racism
merri ok
SEE PVTIZATION EXTRACTION
OOPS // SEE MASS DEPORT MILLER 4
see inequality
see payday
see debtor prison
also debt poverty
eg prison phones
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Texas Observer: “TPPF’s Long Love Affair With Ken Paxton”
Law360: “Do New Laws Seek To Regulate Charitable Bail, Or End It?”
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/wisconsin-bail/
xmas holiday mkt, so not political? kochs boast about crim just reform? recent left DA wins eg SF?
After an SUV plowed through a holiday parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin on November 21, killing five people and injuring 48, including many children, hard-right pundits treated the subsequent arrest of Darrell Brooks like a gift.
Jennifer Van Laar, the editor of popular conservative blog Red State, tweeted, "FIFTY PAGES in Darrell Brooks' criminal record. Drugs, violence, crimes of moral turpitude, sexual offenses. But hey, let's allow him to bond out on $1000 even though he's charged with jumping bail."
Alt-right troll Jack Posobiec and COVID-19 disinformation spreader Chuck Callesto echoed this idea. Turning Point USA's Benny Johnson went a step further, blaming Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm for the incident. So did Mike Cernovich, who ripped into Chisholm as a "Soros DA," despite Chisholm never receiving money from George Soros or his affiliated PACs.
DA Chisholm, as a writer at Red State put it, is allegedly a "radical leftist who has sought to institute 'criminal justice reform' via 'bail reform.'" It is insinuated that Chisholm quietly ushered Brooks out on a serious and recent domestic violence charge on $1,000 bail, then rolled it back in the media after the tragedy, claiming that his deputy prosecutor made a mistake (Chisholm has now launched an investigation into the Brooks bail decision).
Such commentators are in desperate need of a fact-check.
Wisconsin is not like California or New Jersey, which saw bail reform legislation pass in the last few years. It has not had a substantial amendment to its bail law in at least 10 years, according to the Wisconsin state legislature's website.
However, the current law does state that a judge can hold a person charged with a crime in jail pretrial "only upon a finding by the court that there is a reasonable basis to believe that bail is necessary to assure appearance in court."
Meanwhile, both chambers of the Wisconsin legislature have been dominated by Republicans every year in the last decade.
Besides which, if we look at bail reform on a statistical, rather than anecdotal, level, it does not reduce public safety. The vast majority of people facing charges return to court regardless of money bail. In addition, detaining people pretrial, effectively punishing poverty, is "criminogenic," because people lose their jobs and community ties are weakened.
"Money bail compromises public safety," according to analysis from the Prison Policy Initiative.
As Cernovich points out to support his cause, Chisholm has delivered criminal justice reform talking points. But Chisholm has rarely delivered anything on decarcerationbuttalking points. The Democrat, first elected in 2006, has spent much of his career carefully avoiding policies that would make right-wing opponents angry.
In 2017, for example, Chisholm explained how he refuses to categorically drop marijuana possession cases, despite many of his peers elsewhere doing just that.
Chisholm is also the orchestrator of a national strategy to increase the use of drug-induced homicide prosecutions to people who sell drugs as murderers, despite people who have overdosed often not wanting this response. He has sent Assistant District Attorney Patricia Daughtery to national conferences to evangelize these prosecutions. Daughtery has gone so far as to advise officials to build cases using tactics that are disrespectful to the same people she is supposedly trying to protect, such as using the cell phones of people who overdosed.
Additionally, during Chisholm's tenure, Wisconsin had the highest rate of Black incarceration in the nation, with about 65 percent of Black Wisconsinites living in Milwaukee County. University of Wisconsin law professor Ion Meyn has raised concerns that part of this is due to higher prosecution rates and lower plea bargain rates for Black suspects.
Amid Chisholm's middle-of-the-road approach to his office, Milwaukee has one of the highest violent crime rates in the country, with 1,332 incidents for every 100,000 residents. His attempt to please everyone and incense no one has achieved little, and there are numerous progressive steps he should be taking. Chances are, the politicization of the Brooks case will increase the DA's timidity and push him in the opposite direction.
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/bail-system/
Since January, a dozen people have died while awaiting trial at Rikers prison in New York City. There has been a 27 percent increase in violent incidents compared to last year. Fifteen people have died at Harris County jail in Texas over three months, according to activists. A Reuters investigation found that between 2008 and 2019 nearly 5,000 people died inside jails nationwide. None were convicted. Reporters found a 35 percent rise in inmate deaths even before the covid pandemic ravaged overcrowded prisons. The current state of our bail system means that you don't need to be convicted of a crime to lose your rights — or face a death sentence. How can we claim people are innocent until proven guilty if they face jail time without trial?
There are typically around half a million people held in jail awaiting trial at any given time. These are people who have not been convicted of any charge but are awaiting trial. Holding people in jail, particularly for minor and non-violent offenses, amounts to punishing people who have not been convicted of a crime. Considering the state of our jails, people typically face violence, solitary confinement and a denial of rights without the full due process of law. Technically, those held while awaiting trial have the benefit of a bail hearing. But the imposition of pre-trial detention is arbitrary and often based on the whims of individual judges. The process creates a different judicial system for those without money, as the vast majority of people in custody awaiting trial are there because they can't afford bail.
Theoretically, those held in pretrial detention are being kept in custody to guarantee they appear in court. However, because they are treated as prisoners, though presumptively innocent, their rights are heavily curtailed. It is long accepted law that those who have been convicted of a crime do not have full access to their full rights. Pre-trial detention applies this standard to those who have just been charged with a crime, in practice if not legally, as long as the treatment of pre-trial detainees is not being imposed out of "punishment."
In 1979's Bell v. Wolfish, the United States Supreme Court created this "punishment" test. It held that restrictions on pre-trial detainees are unconstitutional only if they concern an independent constitutional right or qualify as a punishment. Practices reasonably related to managing a detention facility were not considered punishments. Prohibitions on contact visits, cavity searches or shared occupancy in a cell only meant for one were therefore constitutional for pre-trial detainees who had not yet been convicted of any crime.
The standard for considering restrictions on the rights of pre-trial detainees? If they were intended to punish or if they were reasonable practice for maintaining a facility. Courts tend to side with correction departments when determining such cases. A 2015 Supreme Court case, Kingsley v. Hendrickson, ruled that those in pre-trial detention have a lower burden for proving excessive force than someone who had been convicted of a crime and was serving out their sentence. However, implied in the case was that those held awaiting trial would be subject to "reasonable" force to keep them in line in jail.
Restrictions on contact visits are particularly violating when one considers that women are less likely to be able to afford bail and more likely to be held in custody while awaiting trial. Sixty-six percent of women in pre-trial detention have minor children. Without bail, a single mother without a safety net faces the involvement of the state's family court system and the possibility of her children being placed in foster care. Yet according to the standard the courts use to determine the treatment of pretrial detainees, losing contact with one's children, and possibly losing them permanently to the state, is not "punishment" or a violation of that presumptively innocent person's full rights.
Before the pandemic, there was some interest in bail reform. New York state passed a bail reform billin 2019 and amended it in April 2020. It went into effect July 1 that year. The reform's initial intent was to dramatically decrease the number of people incarcerated awaiting trial by changing the process of imposing cash bail. The bill was expected to eliminate cash bail for up to 90 percent of arrests, but the April 2020 revisions expanded the qualifying cash bail cases. By expanding the types of cases eligible for cash bail, more people are held in pretrial detention unable to afford bail. The current law still prohibits cash bail for most misdemeanors and non-violent felonies. The expanded list of charges where cash bail is permitted has left bail mostly under the discretion of the individual judge. However, amending the original law prevented the needed dramatic decrease in pretrial detainees during the pandemic. Bail reform was also an issue in the 2020 Democratic primary with many candidates calling for ending or reforming cash bail. Unfortunately, federal action has stalled.
Despite calls to reduce prison populations during the pandemic, little has been done to protect prisoners, convicted or awaiting trial. In the first 13 months of the pandemic, 31,000 federal prisoners sought compassionate release. The Bureau of Prisons released 36. By June 2021, half a million had contracted covid. At the end of 2020 an estimated one in five prisoners had covid. In some states responses to the pandemic, like postponing trials, kept people jailed longer. Texas prison authorities tried reducing the population by releasing medically vulnerable inmates but Governor Greg Abbott limited their authority. In Alabama, rather than reducing the overall population, lawmakers intend to use covid relief funds to build new prisons, claiming this will lessen overcrowding and reduce the spread of the disease.
Covid has shown how dangerous pre-trial detention is, but the pandemic didn't create the crisis. People are being held for months, or years, without being convicted of a crime. They have little recourse to remedy their situations. The pressure of pre-trial detention increases the likelihood a person will plead guilty. Pre-trial detention is a classist denial of constitutional rights but it also costs the government 13.6 billion a year. We must see detention is itself punishment and encourage judges to explore other avenues of guaranteeing a person shows up for trial. Investing in ankle monitoring devices would save the government money and better protect the rights of the accused.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/they-loan-you-money-then-they-get-a-warrant-for-your-arrest/
They loan you money. Then they get a warrant for your arrest
Written by Anjali Tsui / ProPublica December 3, 2019
Cecila Avila was finishing a work shift at a Walmart. David Gordon was at church. Darrell Reese was watching his granddaughter at home. Jessica Albritton had pulled into the parking lot at her job, where she packed and shipped bike parts.
All four were arrested by an armed constable, handcuffed and booked into jail. They spent anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days behind bars before being released after paying a few hundred dollars in bail or promising to appear in court.
None of the four, who live in northern Utah and were detained last year, had committed a crime. They had each borrowed money at high interest rates from a local lender called Loans for Less and were sued for owing sums that ranged from $800 to $3,600. When they missed a court date, the company obtained a warrant for their arrest.
Avila was handcuffed and marched down the main aisle in the Walmart in front of customers and co-workers. “It was the most embarrassing thing,” said Avila, 30, who has worked at the store for eight years. At the time of the arrest, Loans for Less had applied to garnish her wages. “It just didn’t make any sense to me,” she said. “Why am I being arrested for it?”
It’s against the law to jail someone because of an unpaid debt. Congress banned debtors prisons in 1833. Yet, across the country, debtors are routinely threatened with arrest and sometimes jailed, and the practices are particularly aggressive in Utah. (ProPublica recently chronicled how medical debt collectors are wielding similar powers in Kansas.)
Technically, debtors are arrested for not responding to a court summons requested by the creditor. But for many low-income people, who are not familiar with court proceedings, lack access to transportation, child care options or time off, or move frequently and thus may not receive notifications, it’s a distinction without a difference.
Reese, a 70-year-old Vietnam veteran, said he missed a hearing because he couldn’t afford to put gas in his car. Gordon, 46, said he was never personally notified of the court date. Avila and Albritton, 32, said they couldn’t take time off work.
:{:{}:
}:
In Utah, payday lenders and similar companies that offer high-interest, small-dollar loans dominate small claims court. Loans for Less, for example, filed 95% of the small claims cases in South Ogden, a suburban city of 17,000 about a half-hour north of Salt Lake City on the interstate, in fiscal year 2018, according to state data.
:{:{}:
}:
Across Utah, high-interest lenders filed 66% of all small claims cases heard between September 2017 and September 2018, according to a new analysis of court records conducted by a team led by Christopher Peterson, a law professor at the University of Utah and the financial services director at the Consumer Federation of America, and David McNeill, a legal data consultant and CEO of Docket Reminder.
Companies can sue for up to $11,000 in Utah’s small claims courts, which are stripped of certain formalities: There are rarely lawyers, judges are not always legally trained and the rules of evidence don’t apply.
Lenders file thousands of cases every year. When defendants don’t show up — and they often don’t — the lenders win by default. Once a judgment is entered, companies can garnish borrowers’ paychecks and seize their property. If borrowers fail to attend a supplemental hearing to answer questions about their income and assets, companies can ask the court to issue a bench warrant for their arrest.
Arrest warrants were issued in an estimated 3,100 small claims cases during the period studied by Peterson’s team. Almost all of the warrants — 91% — were issued in cases filed by payday, auto title or other high-interest lenders. The number of people who are jailed appears to be small. The state does not track the information, but ProPublica examined a sampling of court records and identified at least 17 people who were jailed over the course of 12 months.
Most people scramble to meet bail to avoid being incarcerated. Others, like Avila, Gordon and Albritton, are booked into jail and held until they pay. They often borrow from friends, family, bail bonds companies and even take on new payday loans.
“Bail” has a different meaning in Utah than it does in other states — one that tilts the power even more in the direction of lenders and other creditors.In 2014, state legislators passed a law that made it possible for creditors to get access to bail money posted in civil cases. Prior to that, bail money would return to the defendant. Now, it is routinely transferred to high-interest lenders. The law has transformed the state’s power to incarcerate into a powerful tool to guarantee that loan companies get paid....
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DN NOV 12, 2019
Vowing to End Cash Bail & Reform Justice System, Chesa Boudin Wins San Francisco DA Race
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NB also black kids get arrested at school in way higher numbers:
https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/school-district-threatens-parents-their-children-may-be-put-in-foster-care-over-unpaid-lunch-bills/
School district threatens parents their children may be put in foster care over unpaid lunch bills
Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement July 20, 2019
A Luzerne County, Pennsylvania school district is under fire for sending letters to parents who owe money for their children’s lunches. The letters threaten that if the bills remain unpaid their children could be removed from their homes and placed in foster care.
“Your child has been sent to school every day without money and without breakfast and/or lunch. This is a failure to provide your child with proper nutrition and you can be sent to Dependency Court for neglecting your child’s right to food,” the letter reads, as NBC News reported.
“If you are taken to dependency court, the result may be your child being removed from your home and placed in foster care,” the letter (below) adds.
Andy Mehalshick
Foster Care fallout! More reaction today to a letter sent to parents in the Wyoming Valley West School District threatening to send their kids to Foster Care unless they make good on delinquent lunch bills. A State lawmaker weighs in. Eyewitness News. http://PAhomepage.com
View image on Twitter]
The school district solicitor, Charles Coslett, appeared gleeful over the letter, saying, “Hopefully that gets their attention, certainly did, think about it,” he told NBC News.
Related: School Cafeteria Confiscates Lunches From Hands of 40 Kids for Insufficient Funds
PAhomepage reports many are upset over the letter, and not just parents.
“It’s just not true. We do not remove children from families for unpaid bills,” Luzerne County Children and Youth Services executive director Joanne Van Saun told the newspaper. “I found it very disturbing. Upsetting. It’s a total misrepresentation, a gross misrepresentation of what our agency does.”
Luzerne County Manager David Pedri called it “a gross misrepresentation as to what we do. What you are really doing is weaponizing the good things we are doing in Luzerne County. I’m asking the school district to retract the letter.”
The school district is facing $20,000 in unpaid school lunch bills.
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2015, late settled
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-payday-lawsuit-20150804-story.html
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has filed a lawsuit against a Canadian payday lending company, alleging that its web of subsidiaries collected money that consumers did not owe and falsely threatened borrowers with imprisonment or wage garnishment.
In the lawsuit, regulators say the British Columbia-based NDG Financial Corp. and its "maze" of nine interrelated companies made and collected payday loans that were either completely or partially void in 17 states.
The companies, collectively called the NDG Enterprise, made consumers believe that federal and state laws did not apply to them, according to the lawsuit.
All of the companies except two are Canadian. Two are incorporated in Malta.
NDG Financial Corp. could not be reached for comment.
"Companies making loans within the U.S. have to comply with federal law," bureau director Richard Cordray said in a statement. "The Consumer Bureau will work to ensure that American consumers receive the protections and fair treatment they deserve.”
The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in New York, said that since 2011,NDG Financial has extended payday loans exclusively over the Internet through its subsidiaries to U.S. consumers.
The NDG Enterprise has made loans in all 50 states. Loans generally are 14 days, or short term, and range from $100 to $1,500. Finance charges for each $100 borrowed can be between $19.98 and $26.98.
Some loan agreements also had an illegal clause giving the NDG Enterprise the authority to collect outstanding loan amounts directly from a consumer's wages via their employers if the borrower defaulted on the payment.
According to the lawsuit, the NDG Enterprise received payment directly from the employers' payroll accounts "numerous" times.This type of action could result in "serious and detrimental interference with employment relationships" and negatively affect promotions, raises or even lead to job loss, according to the lawsuit.
In "numerous instances," the NDG Enterprise also told consumers that non-payment of debt would result in a lawsuit, arrest, imprisonment or wage garnishment, even though it did not have the legal authority to do so.
Regulators are seeking monetary damages and to prevent the NDG Enterprise from violating federal consumer financial protection laws.
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==
nick confess
But within the walls Warren had so carefully constructed, the bricks began to loosen. Over the last year, Mulvaney’s temporary hiring freeze has turned into an indefinite one, slowly shrinking the C.F.P.B.’s staff by attrition. Bureau news releases, once packed with colorful details about abusive lending practices, have been toned down to dry legalese. According to a report by Christopher Peterson, a senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America, enforcement at the bureau appears to have dwindled radically. In 2018, the bureau announced just 11 lawsuits or settlements, less than a third of the number during Cordray’s last year. In the months since Mulvaney reorganized the Office of Fair Lending, the bureau has not brought a single case alleging illegal discrimination. While Mulvaney pledged data-driven enforcement, his bureau brought only one case against debt collectors, who account for more complaints to the C.F.P.B. than almost any other industry. Where Mulvaney or his successor have allowed cases to go forward, lenders have often settled with lowered fines or none at all. When the bureau settled a three-year prosecution of a group of payday lenders called NDG Enterprise — which found that thegroup had falsely threatened American customers with arrest and imprisonment if they failed to repay loans — NDG walked away without paying a cent.
:{:{}:
}:
After Trump announced in December that he was promoting Mulvaney to the top staff job in his administration, senior White House officials told reporters that he was the president’s “original Plan B.” As Trump’s acting White House chief of staff, Mulvaney sits — however temporarily — at Washington’s bureaucratic apex, with influence far beyond the C.F.P.B. In the months leading up to the announcement, Mulvaney sometimes brushed off questions about his ambitions by joking that he was busy enough running two agencies. Now, in a sense, he runs them all.
==
https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/we-need-to-stop-the-criminalization-of-poverty/
...
RR: In addition to being a massive drain on the economy, these fees don’t even help cash-strapped cities. Uncollected court debt for traffic and criminal offenses totaled $12.3 billion in 2016 in California alone. A lotof the fee revenue that does come in goes to collection services, that are private and for profit. Which means very little of the money that is collected winds up going to roads, bridges, schools, and other good things we all need.
WKB: That’s why we need to stop the criminalization of poverty. Have you heard of win-win? Well, this is lose-lose, non-win. It sucks. It’s bad for EVERYBODY.
RR: Bad for poor people, bad for the social fabric, and doesn’t even help the bottom line for government.
WKB: Our home state of California is helping to lead the charge to stop the criminalization of poverty. Go to CAdebtjustice.orgfor more information. Go. Don’t just watch the video. Go.
==
https://www.splcenter.org/news/2019/02/21/following-splc-complaint-louisiana-bail-bond-companies-ordered-repay-millions-excess-fees
==
https://www.propublica.org/article/diversion-programs-illinois-criminal-justice-system-bounceback-correctivesolutions
no lnx
ILLINOIS REPORTING PROJECT
Diversion Programs Say They Offer a Path Away From Court, but Critics Say the Tolls Are Hefty
The programs raise legal and ethical questions, including whether they create an uneven playing field for defendants and financial incentives for prosecutors to dispose of cases in ways they might not otherwise.
by Rebecca Burns for ProPublica Nov. 13, 4 a.m. CST
ILLINOIS REPORTING PROJECT
Reporting From Around The State
This story was co-published with the Journal Star, Rockford Register Star and State Journal-Register.
After he was charged in January with burglary, D’Angelo Springer had a decision to make.
Springer, 24, had been pulled over after running a stop sign in Kankakee County. He was giving a ride to an acquaintance, who had an arrest warrant in a neighboring county. When officers searched the car, according to police reports, they found a checkbook behind the passenger seat that had been taken in a car break-in. Springer denied he was involved, but he was charged with felony burglary, which could have sent him to prison.
Before trial, the Kankakee County prosecutors gave Springer another option: He could enroll in a new diversion program the county was offering. If he completed the program and performed community service, his charges would be dropped.
D'Angelo Springer, 24, was charged in January with felony burglary in Kankakee County. He maintains he was innocent, but rather than risk going to prison, he paid to complete a diversion program run by a private company. (Sarah Nader for ProPublica Illinois)
Signing up for the program cost $250, money Springer would have to scrape together.
“They were saying: ‘This is a good deal. You should take it,’” Springer said recently. “I didn’t really know I had another option.” Frightened by the prospect of prison, he agreed to the diversion program.
Diversion programs like the one in Kankakee County, which launched last year, raise a host of legal and ethical questions, including whether they create an uneven playing field for criminal defendants, with those able to pay gaining an advantage over those who cannot, and whether they create financial incentives for prosecutors to dispose of cases in ways they might not otherwise.
Administered by a for-profit company called CorrectiveSolutions, the Kankakee County program and others like it require suspects to pay fees and take courses related to their charges — some of the courses in person, others through interactive online seminars. Prosecutors also may add conditions such as community service or drug or alcohol testing. Fees are divided between the companies and the prosecutor’s office, though the companies typically receive most of the money.
Kankakee is one of 24 counties in Illinois that contract with CorrectiveSolutions, or a sister firm, Victim Services Inc., to run fee-based diversion programs. Twenty-two of those counties use programs to manage bad-check cases, the company’s bread and butter, though as the use of checks has declined CorrectiveSolutions has expanded to offer diversion programs for other, sometimes more serious crimes, including theft, drug and alcohol offenses, and even domestic violence.
At least 10 Illinois counties contract with another firm, BounceBack Inc., that offers diversion programs for suspects in bad-check cases. Kankakee County also has a contract with BounceBack.
With about a third of Illinois counties contracting with one of the two companies, Illinois is a hotbed for the for-profit diversion industry. Nationwide, nearly 200 prosecutors’ offices in at least 22 states contract with CorrectiveSolutions or BounceBack, according to a February report by the American Civil Liberties Union. Officials at CorrectiveSolutions say they operate in approximately 100 jurisdictions.
The expansion of private, for-profit diversion programs comes as states struggle with the costs of their prison populations and counties grapple with their own financial woes. But it concerns criminologists and others who see in it the intersection of two troubling trends: the outsourcing of crucial operations of the criminal justice system to the private sector, and the growing imposition of fees on mostly low-income defendants.
Some counties have received tens of thousands of dollars from programs, others much less.
There is concern, too, that long-standing disparities in the criminal justice system between the poor and well-to-do will only grow, with wealthier defendants able to pay to make criminal trouble disappear.
“While these arrangements are pitched as saving money, almost inevitably they have the effect of increasing the costs on vulnerable families,” said Brian Highsmith, a fellow at the National Consumer Law Center, a nonprofit that advocates for low-income consumers. “They also put unaccountable corporations in charge of administering key functions of our legal system.”
Through Freedom of Information Act requests, ProPublica Illinois obtained contracts, program reports and internal communications from more than 30 state’s attorney’s offices in Illinois that contract with CorrectiveSolutions, Victim Services or BounceBack. The records suggest that there is little oversight of the programs, although the companies dispute that, and that the programs often generate more money for the companies than for prosecutors’ offices.
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Company officials say that the programs are no different than other services the justice system hires outside companies to perform, such as information technology. They say they are well-suited to manage the programs.
The officials say, too, that the programs help keep defendants out of jail and reduce recidivism.
“I don’t think there is anything unique about private companies operating diversion programs versus not-for-profit organizations or in-house programs,” K. Thomas Jonsson, chief operating officer and general counsel for CorrectiveSolutions, said in an email. “In our experience, we provide greater transparency and case access to the prosecutor’s office than other not-for-profit organizations.”
Gale Krieg, the president of BounceBack, said in an email that the company has helped state’s attorneys across the country recover millions of dollars for victims and helped defendants avoid a “criminal record that would be with them the rest of their life.” The company, he said, does not decide how cases are handled.
“We function exactly as if we were the prosecutor’s in-house staff,” Krieg added. “We make no prosecutorial decisions. … We cannot and do not ever threaten prosecution or jail. We are simply glorified secretaries carrying out the prosecutor’s orders.”
Prosecutors, meantime, say the programs help the criminal justice system work more efficiently, keeping offenders out of jail, which cuts down on incarceration costs, and generating new revenue streams for cash-strapped offices, even if those streams are relatively small. At the same time, they give offenders a second chance, the prosecutors say.
Marlow Jones, chief of the criminal division for the Kankakee County state’s attorney’s office, said its diversion program is a smart alternative to traditional tough-on-crime tactics that focus on locking up people. He said he always tells offenders who claim innocence that they are entitled to their day in court.
“Our goal is to try to help people be accountable for what they did without putting a permanent stain on their record,” Jones, who oversees the county’s diversion programs, said in an interview.
Matt Jones, the associate director for the State’s Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor, a statewide office that assists Illinois prosecutors, said privately operated diversion programs allow prosecutors with dwindling resources to meet the growing demands for criminal justice reform.
“In reality, you’re faced with two options,” Jones said. “You can either say: ‘We don’t care how many bad checks you write. We don’t care how many vandalism acts you do. We don’t care how much you shoplift. We don’t have the resources to focus on those offenses.’ Or you find alternative, outside vendors who can handle some of those offenses.”
“Using bad-check diversion to avoid hanging someone with a theft conviction,” he added, “is a reform that [prosecutors] embraced and implemented long before any of the reformist groups were out there hollering about it.”
A History of Legal Trouble
What is now CorrectiveSolutions opened in Illinois in 1998 as American Corrective Counseling Services, although over the past two decades the company has undergone a number of corporate changes.
Today, it often does business in Illinois as Victim Services Inc., according to contracts.
Within six years, the California-based company was operating bad-check diversion programs in at least a dozen Illinois counties, according to internal promotional materials obtained by ProPublica Illinois.
BounceBack, which is based in Missouri, began its operations in Illinois about a decade later.
The initial business model for both companies was simple: If someone bounced a check, merchants could save themselves the trouble of filing a police report and criminal complaint by passing the contact information for the check writer to the companies, which also market services to merchants.
Merchants, which can sign up for some of the services online, sometimes send bad-check cases directly to the diversion companies, before they’ve even crossed a prosecutor’s desk. The companies say that prosecutors establish criteria for entering a program and review a candidate’s eligibility before they are contacted.
It is also a time-saver for prosecutors, who otherwise might have to add a case to their dockets. Under Illinois’ criminal code, writing a bad check can be a “deceptive practice,” a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail for checks up to $150, and for checks of $150 or more a felony with a prison term of up to three years.
The companies run the classes and almost every other aspect of the diversion programs. Some prosecutors provide companies a digital copy of their seal for use in communications with offenders.
The first step typically is a letter that warns the check writers of the possibility of time behind bars or a fine. The letter offers the check writers a chance to avoid prosecution in exchange for completing the program, which typically includes paying restitution, signing up for a class on financial accountability or a related subject, and then paying any attendant fees.
Class fees for diversion programs in Illinois range from $125 to $175, according to contracts involving CorrectiveSolutions and BounceBack reviewed by ProPublica Illinois. Administrative fees add another $25 to $35. And then there are fees for enrolling in a payment plan or rescheduling a missed class, according to the contracts.
All of that is in addition to the amount of the bounced check and any convenience fee merchants charge. Many counties’ contracts with the companies include an automatic increase in class fees each year.
As a result, people who bounced checks for as little as $5 can end up paying upward of $300.
Program reports show it’s not just businesses that refer bad checks to diversion. School districts, county health departments and circuit court clerks around the state also referred people to the companies after they had been accused of writing bad checks.
...[long, see diversion
==
privatized probation
http://www.allgov.com/news/controversies/outsourcing-probation-a-lucrative-and-growing-industry-140129?news=852293
Privatization of the criminal justice system has extended beyond prisons that are run for profit and now includes probation operators making a buck off Americans who have violated the law.
Quietly over the past four decades, private probation companies have gone into business in 40% of U.S. states, most of them in the South. Georgia alone has 34 businesses providing probation services.
These entrepreneurs have replaced county offices that used to oversee individuals given probation instead of jail time for their offenses.
But the switch from public to private probation has resulted in excessive financial costs levied on probationers, some of whom have been threatened with incarceration for not paying these companies on time.
Circuit Judge Hub Harrington called the private probation system in Harpersville, Alabama, a “judicially sanctioned extortion racket.”
Take for example Sentinel Offender Services, a $30 million enterprise operating in four states. An investigation by NBC News found that Sentinel demanded payments for fees from low-income probationers and resorted to arrest warrants to force the issue, regardless of the individuals’ financial status.
All of this despite a 1983 federal ruling that said that people on probation cannot be imprisoned for being indigent.
In Florida, private firms can add as much as 40% in surcharges on top of the debt owed by probationers. In Illinois, the add-on fees can amount to 30% of the standing debt.
The Brennan Center for Justice says that at least nine states allow companies to charge probationers excessive fees.
Former law enforcement officials control this industry—at least in Georgia—having leveraged their connections into profitable contracts. “This is completely dominated by retired state probation people and wardens of state prisons,” Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “They created this industry for themselves.”
They did so after Georgia passed a law in 2000 that transferred state probation services to the counties, thereby allowing local courts to outsource those services to private companies. They are allowed to handle all probation cases other than those involving felons.
Bobby Whitworth, the former head of the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, accepted payoffs in return for helping to pass that law. He was eventually imprisoned on public corruption charges for having done so.
“My problem [with private probation services] is with…the fact that people are getting rich off the poorest people in society,” Steve Bright, senior counsel for the Southern Center for Human Rights, told the Journal-Constitution. “Many private probation companies don't do anything but collect checks from people. Perhaps someone who has run a loan company would be better qualified.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff, Danny Biederman
To Learn More:
How Private Probation Companies Make Money From the Those They Trap in the Justice System (by Aaron Cantú, AlterNet)
Connections Matter in Ga. Private Probation Industry (by Rhonda Cook, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
'Cash Register Justice': Private Probation Services Face Legal Counterattack (by Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan-Seville, NBC
compiled a bit of info in my petition to End For Profit Probation: http://www.change.org/petitions/end-for-profit-private-probation-of-misdemeanor-cases-in-the-united-states
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https://www.c-span.org/video/?436568-1/after-words-peter-edelman
After Words with Peter Edelman
Professor Peter Edelmantalked about his book Not a Crime to Be Poor, in which he argues that courts are exploiting the poor by charging excessive fines and fees for minor crimes. He was interviewed by Representative Hank Johnson(D-GA).
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Report: Cash Bail System Hurts Poor and Communities of Color in L.A.
“Many people don’t even have $100 in the bank, so paying 10 percent to a bond agent means that money won’t be going toward rent or food.”
https://www.alternet.org/human-rights/cash-bail-system-hurts-poor-and-communities-color
In advance of a legislative battle over reforming California’s cash bail system, a new reportshines light on which Los Angeles communities pay the most bail and by how much. The Price for Freedom, published by the University of California, Los Angeles’ Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, analyzed arrest data from 2012 through 2016. The authors concluded that the money bail system takes a “multi-billion dollar toll that demands tens of millions of dollars annually in cash and assets from some of L.A.’s most economically vulnerable persons, families and communities.”
Using the Los Angeles County Superior Court’s misdemeanor and felony bail schedules, researchers discovered that bail set for more than 374,000 people arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department for misdemeanors and felonies over that five-year period was $19.4 billion.
Bail agents typically charge seven to 10 percent of the total bail; money going to bail bondsmen, whether upfront or through installments, is nonrefundable, even if defendants are found not guilty or have their charges dropped by the prosecutor.
The Bunche Center study also found that the cash bail system disproportionately affects lower income Angelenos and communities of color. During the period covered by the study, black Angelenos paid bond agents $40.7 million in non-refundable fees — 21 percent of total fees paid to bond agents in a population that represents only nine percent of the population. Latinos paid just over $92 million, and whites just under $38 million over the same period. Figures for Asian Americans were unavailable to researchers.
The Bunche Center study is the first comprehensive look into the size and impact of the bail system in the city of Los Angeles. Researchers plan to release a similar report for Los Angeles County in 2018, saying that the numbers they compiled should show lawmakers what’s at stake in the escalating debate over cash bail reform.
Comprehensive legislation to eliminate California’s bail system failed in the Legislature this year. Twin bills, Senate Bill 10 authored by Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys), and Assembly Bill 42, authored by Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland), would throw out the California bail schedules and mandate counties to conduct pretrial assessments to determine whether a defendant poses a safety threat to the community or a flight risk. The bills would also mandate counties to develop plans to ensure low-risk defendants show up for their court dates. Bonta and Hertzberg have vowed to bring back bail reform legislation early in 2018. And their efforts have the support of Gov. Jerry Brown, who has said “inequities exist” in the system, and of Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, who cited the state’s bail system as “unsafe and unfair,” and created a working group to recommend changes.
UCLA Professor Kelly Lytle Hernandez, one of the authors of The Price of Freedom, told Capital & Main that her study showed 70 percent of the bail amount levied went unpaid, and as a result 223,366 people remained behind bars until their arraignment.
“Many of these people don’t even have $100 in the bank, so paying 10 percent to a bond agent means that money won’t be going toward rent or food. If the breadwinner stays behind bars, the family suffers from lack of income.”
And it is most often female family members who, when they are able, engage bail agents. A 2015 study led by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights found that incarceration takes a toll on all family members through debt, mental and physical ailments, and severed family ties.
For Isaac Bryan, a graduate researcher in the UCLA Department of Public Policy and a co-author of The Price of Freedom, the issue of cash bail is personal. Eight months ago he received a call from a bond agent saying that a family member had been arrested for alleged property crime and drug possession. The bail was set at $25,000, and would he be able to cover it? As a struggling student, Bryan didn’t have the 10 percent upfront fee.
Supporters of cash bail say it ensures defendants will show up to court. If they fail to appear, they forfeit their bail money. Critics answer that only works when an arrestee puts up the entire bail amount. If they pay a bail agent, they lose their down payment regardless of whether they show up. The agent is on the hook for the rest of the bail.
Bail reform advocates also point to a 2017 report, Selling Off Our Freedom, published by the ACLU and the nonprofit Color of Change, which showed that much of the money collected by bail agents goes to big underwriters, including Japan-based Tokio Marine and Toronto-based Fairfax Financial, and that insurers offload most of the risk to bond agents.
Efforts to reform the cash bail system have met strong resistance from law enforcement, prosecutors and, not surprisingly, the bail industry, whose representatives say that eliminating cash bail would pose considerable harm to the public.
Cash-bail advocates also point out that agents help defendants, who otherwise could not afford to do so, exercise their constitutional right to bail. But the question reformers ask, and what’s at the heart of the reform debate is: Why should freedom be determined by a person’s bank account?“Bail bond is of no expense to the taxpayer,” said Zeke Unger, owner of Lil’ Zeke’s Bail Bonds in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. “But if you let defendants out, not only do they have no motivation to go to court, you’ll have to invest in manpower to keep track of them while they’re out.”
Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, senior campaign strategist for the ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice and a contributor to both Selling Off Our Freedom and The Price for Freedom reports, said that cash bail is supposed to make sure people return to court, but because of the high bail, in many cases, “it’s a way of keeping people in jail. Bail is not supposed to be a punishment. Right now the bail system is wealth-based detention.”
“We know that people of color are over-policed and over-represented in jails,” she added. “These reports show one more piece of the scale of economic drain of the criminal justice system on those communities.”
Across the U.S., states and courts are starting to rethink their cash bail systems. Earlier this year, New Jersey implemented an overhaul in its bail structure, and New Mexico is deciding how to address a voter-backed bail reform measure. In July, an Illinois judge ordered the reform of the bail system in Cook County, which includes Chicago. Now defendants who cannot pay bail and pose no flight risk or danger to the public do not remain behind bars before trial.
At the federal level, Senators Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a bill to encourage states to reform the practice of using money bail as a condition of pretrial release in criminal cases.
Supporters of cash bail may see the reform writing on the wall, at least in California. Jeff Clayton, executive director of the American Bail Coalition, told Capital & Main that, although his organization will continue lobbying to fight the abolition of cash bail in Sacramento, it might acquiesce to some reforms.
“Bail is set way too high in California right now, and without the bail industry hardly anyone in the state would get out,” Clayton said. “Even bail on misdemeanors is higher than for felonies in Colorado. This market imbalance needs to be corrected and doing so wouldn’t have a big impact on us.”
Bail in California is set by a schedule for each crime, but varies county by county, though judges have the discretion to alter the bail amount. The Selling Off Our Freedom report found that bail amounts as late as the 1980s were much lower than today, and many people arrested for felonies were released without paying bail. That report also showed that, nationally, between 1990 and 2009, the share of arrestees required to post money bail grew from 37 to 61 percent, and the share of releases depending on bail bond companies doubled in that same period. The report said bail bondsmen and the insurance industry used high crime rates to bolster their argument for laws requiring bail, and lawmakers bought that argument.
Clayton added that sensible reforms could simply do away with bail for minor crimes that don’t present a public danger, like loitering, which often impact homeless and low-income people. “We shouldn’t detain a person who can’t make bail for longer than [what] the actual sentence might be. A 60-day sentence on a fine-eligible offense doesn’t make any sense.”
Larry Buhl is a writer and radio producer based in Los Angeles. He's a regular contributor to Art & Understanding, ATTN:, and DeSmogBlog.
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